"Nothing at all. I see you are rather a low fellow, so I shall treat you with the same contempt as I did the very common person that pulled my nose last week—Silent contempt! That's how I serve people. I despise you, accordingly."
"Werry good," said Crotchet. "That's by far the safestest way, old feller. So now I'll go down into the vaults."
"No news of Todd yet, Sir Richard?" said one of the gentlemen, walking up to the magistrate.
"Oh, Sir Christopher Wren, I beg your pardon," said the magistrate. "I did not see you at the moment. I am sorry to say that although we have some news of Todd, we have not yet been able to catch him. But we must have him, England is not so very large a place after all, and I don't think he has any means of getting away from it."
"The sooner the rascal expiates his crimes upon the scaffold the better. I never before heard of a criminal in whose whole career there was nothing found that could excite the faintest feeling of compassion."
"He is a desperate bad fellow, indeed," said Sir Richard Blunt, "but I hope that he will not long trouble society. I have determined to give up all other pursuits until I take him, and I have a carte blanche from the Secretary of State to go to any expense, and to do what I please, in the way of capturing him."
Todd's heart sunk within him at these words. Had they come from any one else, he would not have heeded them much but from him they were of fearful import.
"Oh, that I could kill that man," he muttered, "then I should know some peace; but while he lives and while I live, we are like two planets in one orbit, and cannot long exist together."
"I wish you every success," said Sir Christopher Wren.
"I am obliged to you, Sir Christopher. The fact is, that Todd left his house pretty full of combustibles, and my men were unwise enough, contrary to my positive orders, to let them be there; and I am afraid that he may have contrived some mode of blowing up the church by a train or some other equally diabolical means, as he had such free and unrestrained access to it for so long."